Headline: Crypto scams wiped out an estimated $80.7B from Americans in 2025, CFA says — more than half of all online-scam losses
A new Consumer Federation of America (CFA) analysis paints a stark picture for crypto users: Americans likely lost about $80.7 billion to cryptocurrency-related fraud in 2025, accounting for more than half of the nation’s total online-scam losses.
Key findings
- Reported vs. estimated losses: The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) recorded $11.37 billion in crypto-related losses last year — a 22% increase from 2024. CFA applied a 7.1x multiplier to account for underreporting and estimates the true crypto loss at roughly $80.7 billion.
- Why 7.1x? CFA uses a multiplier based on a 2017 Bureau of Justice Statistics survey that found only about 14% of fraud victims report crimes to law enforcement. CFA calls the 7.1x factor “conservative.” Industry analysts, including TRM Labs’ Ari Redbord, have also suggested the FBI figures are an important but incomplete benchmark, assuming roughly 15% of victims report.
- Overall scam picture: Across all categories, the FBI logged 1,008,597 complaints and $20.9 billion in reported losses — a 26% year-over-year rise. CFA scales that figure up to an estimated $148.2 billion in annual losses nationwide, or about $1,009 per U.S. household.
- Investment fraud: The largest single category. The FBI recorded $8.6 billion in reported investment fraud, which CFA inflates to an estimated $61.4 billion — a 32% jump from 2024.
- Older Americans hit hard: People over 60 lost about $4.4 billion to crypto fraud alone, nearly 40% of the crypto total.
- AI-enabled crime: For the first time the FBI tracked AI-enabled schemes separately, logging $893 million in losses across 22,364 complaints.
Enforcement and responses
- Prevention efforts: The FBI’s Operation Level Up, which contacts potential victims before they pay, has reached about 8,000 people and says it prevented roughly $500 million in losses overall, including $225.9 million last year.
- Prosecutions and seizures: Cases span domestic and international actors. An Oklahoma man received a five-year sentence last year for a $9.4 million crypto Ponzi. U.S. law enforcement has increasingly targeted foreign-run scams: a newly formed Scam Center Task Force has seized about $25 million tied to fraudulent crypto platforms and romance-scheme operations.
- Major forfeiture action: The Justice Department moved to forfeit 127,271 Bitcoin (then valued at about $15 billion) connected to Prince Group chairman Chen Zhi in a forced-labor scam case in Cambodia — the largest forfeiture in DOJ history. Prince Group has denied involvement in scam operations.
Platforms and regulation
- CFA has sued Meta over scam advertising and singled out Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp as the platforms most associated with scam activity. Ben Winters, CFA’s director of AI and privacy, argued that “tech companies are too often allowed to avoid accountability.”
- A bipartisan bill, the SCAM Act, would bar online platforms from displaying fraudulent or deceptive ads — a policy route CFA supports as part of a push for greater platform responsibility.
What this means for crypto users
- The CFA’s scaling highlights how much fraud likely goes unreported and suggests the headline FBI totals understate reality. For crypto users, the data show that investment scams remain the biggest threat, older adults are disproportionately targeted, and bad actors are increasingly using AI and cross-border networks.
- Law enforcement and regulators are ramping up prevention, prosecution, and asset seizures, but CFA and other consumer advocates want stronger platform accountability and policy tools to curb scam advertising and deceptive listings.
Bottom line: If the CFA’s adjustments are accurate, crypto fraud is not just growing — it’s now the dominant component of U.S. online-scam losses. The report underscores persistent enforcement challenges and renewed calls for platform and policy fixes to stem the flow of funds to fraudsters.
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